Elmer Gantry

About Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry is one of the Sinclair Lewis's most famous novels. Considered scandalous in its day, it is a vicious satire of preachers and those they fool. Gantry has no redeeming features but is seen by the gullible public as a man who speaks the truth about God. Of course he could just as easily have been a lawyer or a politician and the heart of Lewis's satire is how easily people believe what they want to believe. Perhaps nowadays it is better known for the film of the same name which starred Burt Lancaster and won three Academy Awards. However the book is much more biting than the film and provides a fascinating picture both of the man and the times he would have lived in. "This novel 'deals with a brazen ex-football player who enters the ministry and, through his half-plagiarized sermons, his physical attractiveness, and his unerring instinct for promotion, becomes a successful evangelist and later the leader of a large Middle Western church. Carefully researched, the novel was realistic enough to shock both the faithful and the unfaithful.'" Reader's Ency. 3d edition. *** "Biting satire on the Protestant churches in America."